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Sixty thousand extra flights a year are expected at Stansted airport within a
decade after it was sold to the owner of Manchester airport last night for
£1.5 billion.

Manchester Airports Group won a three-way auction after the Competition
Commission forced the former owner, Heathrow Airport Holdings, to sell. MAG,
which also owns East Midlands and Bournemouth airports, said that Stansted
had “significant growth potential”.

Charlie Cornish, MAG’s chief executive, said when he laid out his auction bid
last year that he wanted to increase the number of flights from 130,000 to
190,000 a year, but did not declare whether